Ice Man
by WanderingAliceWrites
Summary: When Natasha breaks free of the Red Room, she takes the Winter Soldier with her. This is what happens to him after. Steve/Bucky.


The last thing Bucky Barnes remembers is a voice in his ear telling him Steve was dead. Everything after that belongs to the Winter Soldier, the creature they molded Bucky's broken mind into. He doesn't feel, or think, or question. He just does as he's told, kills who he's told, trains who he's told. If he could keep memories, the ones he would keep feature a young red-haired girl named Natalia. His student. His friend, but he doesn't have friends.

The last thing that the Winter Soldier remembers is Natalia's garrote wire wrapping around his neck, and her voice in his ears whispering "I'll save you, I swear." He feels himself dying, and it's ok. He won't be their weapon any more. He won't have to be afraid of remembering. But he doesn't die.

The first thing James Barnes remembers is Natalia sitting beside his bed, holding his hand. He tries to move and finds himself restrained. That's good. He's still the Soldier. Whoever Natalia brought him to has to be careful.

"Who are you?" Natalia asks.

"I don't know," he says, because he doesn't. "Natalia-"

"Natasha, now. Natalia was theirs. I'm not," she tells him. He understands. The Soldier was theirs too. He doesn't know who he is.

Natasha asks him every day, "Who are you?" Every day scraps of memory return. It takes a long time. He doesn't know how long. Later, she will tell him it is a year. Finally, finally, when they have removed the restraints and he stops forgetting hours at a time, he can answer her.

"My name is James Buchanan Barnes," he tells her, and her face breaks into a smile. The first one he's seen from her. It's beautiful. He thinks he would be attracted to her, if he didn't have Steve. Steve… who hasn't come to see him. "Where's Steve?" he asks, and the smile is gone.

"James," she says, and that's wrong. Everyone calls him Bucky. Her eyes are wrong too, too sad.

"Where's Steve?" he demands. He knows he's lost years. He doesn't know how many, but it can't be too long. They still play baseball on the radio (though the songs they play now are shit) and the nurses that come to see him all wear the same SSR uniform.

"James, we wanted to break it to you gently," she lays a hand on his arm. He pulls away.

"Break what?"

"It hasn't been a few years. It's been almost sixty."

"What? But… that's impossible. I can't have… shit, that means Steve's old now. God. Will he even remember me?" He doesn't like that thought. Doesn't want to see Steve aged without him. But he'll take what he can get. He wonders if Steve waited for him, or if he got married to some dame (maybe Peggy) and had a bunch of kids. Steve has always liked kids.

"James, I'm so sorry," she moves like she wants to put her hand on his arm again and thinks better of it. "Steve- Captain Steven Rogers died in 1945, taking down a plane filled with Hydra weaponry after neutralizing Johann Schmidt."

He makes her take him to the memorial. It's pretty, filled with red, white and blue. There's a statue of Steve with his shield, and he doesn't cry when he sees it. It's not really Steve, it's too prefect. The statue doesn't have that little scar between his knuckles that he got trying to fight bullies on Tenth Street, or the silly way his hair would sometimes blow in the wind. Its white marble and a prefect smile. It doesn't have any of Steve's warmth.

He does cry, silently, when he sees the folded and framed flag displayed over Steve's medals. Medals Steve had shrugged off as 'just doing his duty'. Natasha pretends not to see. He's grateful, but he thinks about how, if it were Steve, he wouldn't pretend. He'd have made Bucky laugh, wipe away the tears with his handkerchief, and somehow say exactly the right thing to make him feel better. And when they got home, and there was no one to see, he would kiss away all traces of sadness and leave him laughing and full of joy.

It's at the memorial that he decides, if Steve isn't around, he won't be Bucky anymore. He'll be James. Only his friends call him Bucky, and he doesn't need any of those. All he needs is Steve, but Steve is dead. He was the Winter Soldier for the Red Room. But America needs its weapons too. He will be the Winter Soldier again. But this time he will keep his memories. He will do the work Steve would have, and he will do it in a way that would make Steve proud.

SHIELD takes him and Natasha eagerly, just as soon as they are both cleared. They don't send them on a lot of missions together, but James doesn't mind. He likes Natasha, and that's dangerous. He's polite to the other operatives, but only because Steve, wherever he is (it's got to be Heaven. Bucky never believed in God, but James will because that means Steve is someplace good,) would disapprove of anything less. He hears them call him the Ice Man behind his back, not because of his past. It doesn't matter. He's not here to make friends. He's here to do his job. Steve's job. The job the little punk left him alone to do without him.

He's not mad at Steve though, well, maybe just a little. He's mad he never got to say goodbye, that the idiot threw his life away in a war he never should have been allowed to join. But he forgives Steve, because that's just how Steve is- was. Willing to give all of himself, to anyone who needed him. It used to make Bucky jealous, that it wasn't just him that got all of Steve, until he realized that Steve did keep one thing in reserve for just him- his heart.

James does miss Steve though. He misses his warmth in their bed, his brilliant smile, the laughter in his blue-sky eyes. He misses afternoons at the park, watching kids play baseball as Steve sketches, stealing Steve's popcorn and forcing water down his throat when the idiot forgets to hydrate. He misses sharing a tent on missions, fighting side-by-side, watching Steve and seeing him check over his shoulder to make sure Bucky was ok. He misses nights around the camp fire, pressed against Steve's side, laughing with the commandos. He misses Steve, in the way most people would miss home.

"I'm homesick," he says to Natasha one day. They're sitting in the SHIELD cafeteria at lunch. Her companion, a sharp-eyed man named Clint (sometimes called Hawkeye), looks up at him in shock. He's never spoken much in front of him before. He's the Ice Man to him, the assassin that sometimes works with Natasha. But James likes Clint. He reminds him of himself, sarcastic and clever, and utterly devoted to the people he cares about. James thinks maybe there's something there between Clint and Natasha. They work together seamlessly. It reminds him of the way he used to work with Steve, and he pushes the thought out of his mind.

"Want to take a trip?" Natasha asks him, and he nods. That's not what he meant, but its close enough not to matter. Home is Steve, and Steve is New York- bright and vibrant, alive with passion, always in movement. He is back streets where a little punk stood up to bullies, and warm summer days in Central Park watching the people go by. He's everything James remembers as good about the city, and none of the bad he likes to forget.

They go to New York, to his and Steve's old neighborhood. It's like coming home, but it's not. Everything has changed. The diner he and Steve used to eat at, whenever they had a little extra money, is called something else now, and the food is crap. (Well, it's not really crap, but it's not what he expects, what he wants.) The park they used to play at is a skyscraper now, and the Dodgers have moved on to greener pastures. It doesn't help, the way Natasha probably had hoped it would, but he pretends for her. She probably catches on, but doesn't say anything about it. He's becoming the Ice Man to her too.

They return to DC. He loses himself in missions. He's a very good spy, and SHIELD never wastes assets- he has very little time to be idle. He is grateful. It means less time for him to think. He does find time to get Steve's file from Fury. He takes the photo and puts it in his wallet, in the place where most people keep pictures of their wives or kids. Nobody ever sees it but him. He's the Ice Man, he doesn't have emotions. Doesn't love.

Only Howard's kid, Tony, calls him Ice Man to his face. From Tony, it's kind of a joke, or an endearment. The kid is… Christ, he's broken, and James doesn't know how even someone like Howard could have broken his kid this badly, but then he finds out Howard died, and he understands. The kid is just too smart for his own good, and Howard was never good with kids. Nobody showed him how to deal with the excess mental energy. The only steady thing in Tony's life is his secretary, the improbably named Pepper Potts. James wonders about that, about why she stays, because he sees her look at Tony when he isn't looking. And he knows that look. It's the look he used to catch from Steve out of the corner of his eye whenever he went out with the dames, before they'd both stopped being stupid and started dating each other instead.

But Tony's not the kind of guy to settle down, he's too wild. He likes his women and his wine, and his toys. His mind is too active, he needs things to occupy it or he would drive himself crazy when he's not working. After James joins SHIELD, they contact Tony to work on his arm. He starts showing up in DC at odd times and dragging James down to his lab to 'improve' the prosthetic. After, they sometimes (ok, always,) go out and get roaring drunk together. It's the only time James isn't the Ice Man.

One night, when they're both pleasantly drunk, but not yet incoherent (James never gets to the incoherent stage anymore, whatever they did to him changed that,) Tony wraps an arm around him and leans in close, conspiratorially.

"My father was murdered," he says, shocking James.

"What?" James asks, and Tony nods.

"Not a lot of people know. Nobody knows who, or why. They made it look like an accident."

James mulls that over, then stores it to think about when he isn't so intoxicated. Tony has shared a secret with him, and he thinks he remembers that when somebody shares a secret with you, you share one with them in return. So he leans in and slurs "If I could have, I would'a married Steve." It's okay to say that now. Tony won't tell anyone, and anyway, people wouldn't react the same way they would have in his time. Two men (or two women) can get married now.

Tony looks at him with a sad smile. "I know, buddy. I know. I- I'd ask Pepper, but she deserves someone better than me." James nods. He understands. He'd always insisted Steve deserved someone better than him, too. Steve had insisted he was wrong, but he'd always wondered when Steve was going to find someone who wasn't so broken. In a way, it was a blessing Steve wasn't around to see him like this. It would have broken his heart.

After that night, James can't get what Tony said out of his mind. He uses his skills to do a little digging, and what he finds horrifies him. Howard was killed by Hydra. More specifically, by the Red Room, an organization with ties to Hydra. The organization that had had the Winter Soldier and Natalia. He digs some more, and finds that it wasn't either of them that pulled the trigger, and he's glad. He doesn't think he would be able to look Tony in the eyes if he'd found that he'd been the one to kill his dad.

He also finds something else. The Red Room, and Hydra, are woven into SHIELD. It's subtle. Someone who wasn't familiar with both SHIELD and Hydra would never find it. But James has worked for SHIELD for two years now, and he fought Hydra in the beginning. He sees the pattern, and for one bad moment he's in danger of losing his mind. All he had worked to build, all Steve had died for, is being perverted by Hydra. It has to end.

He takes the data to Natasha, who calls Tony and Clint. She also brings in a young agent named Coulson. The kid's too eager, and too much of a fanboy, but he is a good agent. James just wishes he wouldn't look at him that way, with hero-worship in his eyes. Steve was the hero. He's just the jerk that came along for the ride.

They go over it, checking James' work. They find out everything. Then, the four of them go to take it all to Fury. James doesn't trust Fury. He has too many secrets, keeps too much to himself. But this time, he's convinced Fury's telling the truth when he says he doesn't know anything. They start a purge of all the Hydra personnel.

The others, even Natasha, balk when it comes to killing people they know, but James… Once he knows they're Hydra, he doesn't know them. The second target he gets is a man who had an office next to his. He and James would sometimes say hello when they passed in the hallway. He goes to the man's home while he's at work and waits patiently. That night, when he comes home, James greets him with a gun in his face.

"Hey, James, buddy," the man grins. "What- what are you doing here?" James doesn't say anything, he snaps the safety off the gun and the man gulps. "Hey man, you know me. It's Benny. Benny, from Operations?"

"I don't know you," James says harshly. He doesn't. "You're with Hydra."

"I- no, what are you talking about?" the man laughs nervously. He's lying, his eyes give it away. James has all the proof he needs. He pulls the trigger.

"You really are… an ice man…" the man says, before he dies. James shrugs. He's whatever America needs him to be. And right now, it needs him to kill Hydra operatives, no matter who they are. He cleans up the mess and disposes of the body. Nobody ever knows what happened to the man, or the many others James kills.

Three years, and countless kills later, they think they've finally shut down Hydra for good. He personally blows up the old base containing the Zola-computer, and when it comes to killing Pierce, James is the trigger man. It feels like justice. Like revenge. And strangely, like nothing at all.

Then follows a year of relative idleness. James learns about the search for Steve's body. He doesn't cry. He does go to the site and spends hours walking over the ice. He only comes back when he's learned that Tony has been kidnapped.

They find Tony in the desert, escaped from his captors in some kind of metal suit. The kid is hurt, and he's got some kind of glowing thing in his chest keeping him alive. James helps Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes bring him home, where they are met by a very anxious Pepper Potts. James sits in the back at the press conference, and is the only one not surprised by Tony's declaration about Stark Industry's weapons program. Tony isn't a man who can sit with taking life on his conscience. Having experienced it now, he knows what his weapons have been doing. He doesn't have Howard's backbone, James thinks. The ghost of Steve in his mind says no, he does. But Howard never had his heart.

James hangs around, observing Tony for SHIELD. Tony calls him and demands to see his arm, but doesn't tell him what he's working on. Then he's running around in a red-and-gold mechanical suit, and suddenly he's in danger. But before James can do anything, Coulson is there (and damn, the kid grew up fast,) and he and Pepper save the day. James doesn't go check on Tony, after. He knows he's okay, and he has Pepper to take care of him.

He goes on more missions. Tony doesn't call him as often, but when he does there's something off. James worries a little, and asks Natasha to look into it. He goes on a mission, deep cover, and doesn't find out Tony was dying until he's not anymore. He's glad Tony's ok, but he'd rather Tony had told him, asked for his help. Natasha wraps an arm around his shoulders and lets him shake against her. He thought he was done with worrying about people, but it turns out he was wrong. If he loses Tony or Natasha… well. He pulls away from her. He can't do that to himself again. He goes to his apartment, and doesn't call Tony. The next time Tony calls him, he pretends to be busy.

Days pass. Tony stops calling. James doesn't see Natasha. He goes on missions and returns to his empty apartment. Then one day, he wakes up to someone pounding on his door. It's Tony, and he drags James down to his lab to work on his arm. He smiles, and after, they go and get drunk. Tony tells him about nearly-dying when he's deep in his cups, and then smiles a little sappily when he starts to talk about Pepper. James gathers that she finally made a move, or Tony did, and they're sort of dating. He's happy for Tony, he is, but he can't think of anything to say. So he pats Tony on the shoulder, and takes him home to Pepper, and goes back to his lonely bed.

He wakes up one morning to someone, again, pounding on his door. He opens it, expecting Tony, only to see Agent Coulson instead. Coulson takes one look at him, and his expression tells James something has happened. It's too early in the morning for him to deal with whatever it is, but he invites the kid in. Coulson hands him a coffee- black, because coffee? Yeah, the bitterness is kind of the point of coffee. Steve always takes- took- his coffee with milk and sugar.

"What's happened?" James finally asks, because he can't stand the suspense. Coulson only brings him coffee when he has bad news, or news he thinks James won't like.

"They found him," Coulson tells him, and James doesn't need to ask who. His knees turn to water and he collapses back into a chair.

"Where," he croaks out, when he can get his voice working again.

Coulson tells him. "It might be a false alarm," he tells James. "It's likely his plane, but…" James ignores him, and pulls out his phone, dialing Tony's number.

"Tony? It's James. I need a favor."

Tony flies him out to the site before they've even managed to cut through the ice and metal to get into the plane. As soon as he sees it, he knows this is really it. They've found Steve.

Tony asks if he wants him to stay. James barely registers the words. He thinks he says something, tells him some form of 'no', but he's not entirely sure. He can't take his eyes off the men working the laser, cutting a way into what they assume is the cockpit of the ship. With a sharp snap, the circle of metal and ice falls away. James doesn't run, but it's a near thing. He asks if he can go in first. Alone. The agents aren't happy, but they let him in. He hears them wonder at his tone, his desperation. They hadn't thought the Ice Man ever showed emotion.

He drops in the hole. The first thing his light shines on is Steve's shield, encased in a layer of ice. His heart stops, then thrums in his chest, pounding faster than it has in years. His hands shake, he can't hold the light steady. He moves forward, searching. Steve isn't near the shield, he must have lost it during the fight.

There's ice everywhere, and that's so… wrong. Steve was always warm. Before the serum, he'd burned with fever more often than James cared to remember. After… After, his core temperature was higher, like a human furnace in their bed. And even when he wasn't physically warm, mentally and emotionally he was always there. Steve was summer sunlight, warm honey smiles. He had an ever-burning fire in his heart, and when he looked at Bucky, his eyes had always, always been warm. To find him in a place like this… James hates it. Ice is his, the way fire was Steve's.

At the front of the plane, he finds the control panel, the pilot's chair, and Steve. Steve is draped over the console, frozen solid with inches of ice all around him. There's snow piled on top of him, and James brushes it off. There's a metal beam driven through Steve's shoulder, and red ice around his head. Blood. James holds back a sob and rests his forehead against the ice above Steve's face. His eyes are closed, and that's a blessing. James doesn't want to see them blank with death. He presses a kiss to the ice, as close as he can get to Steve at the moment. He cries then, tears freezing before they hit the ground.

Some time later, he doesn't know how long, the agents come and find him. He can tell they are startled. Since when does the Ice Man cry? But right now, he's not the Ice Man. He's just James Buchanan Barnes, and he's mourning his lover, his best friend, his home.

They have to cut Steve out like a block of ice. First they cut the metal beam so they can move him without damaging his body any more. Then, they carve out a block around him. James can't help, and he takes a step back, letting them work. He doesn't go far, won't leave Steve.

Someone brings in a scanning device, going over the plane and taking readings. James doesn't know what it's for, but when he remembers it later, he thinks it's worth its weight in gold. The man running it goes towards Steve, and James moves to stop him, to tell him to leave Steve alone. He doesn't need anyone running tests on his body or taking scans. But the man stops on his own, pausing with the scanner over Steve's head, and utters the words that take James' shattered world and put it back together in an instant.

"Hey, this guy's still alive!"

He thinks he faints. Nobody notices in the flurry of commotion, and he comes to a few minutes later, watching the scientists bicker over how to proceed. He goes over to them.

"Is he really…?" He can't get the words past his lips. Can't say it, can't hear them tell him no. But they nod, and it's more than he could have hoped.

"We don't know if he'll survive the thawing," they tell him, but James doesn't care. Steve is, against all odds, alive. He survived sixty-six years encased in ice. He'll survive the thawing, and whatever else the world can throw at him. James knows, because he knows he'll be by Steve's side. And he won't accept any other outcome.

He hovers as they finish cutting Steve out. He carries him from the plane himself, gently lowering him into the specialized cooler Tony sent for the minute he saw Steve's body (and James doesn't remember ever seeing him inside the plane, but he thinks maybe Tony had told him it would all be ok and patted him on the shoulder.) He won't leave Steve's side, even when they try to put the cooler in the baggage hold of the SHIELD plane. Tony lets him use his personal plane, and he rides next to Steve all the way back to New York. Tony stays up front with the pilot, and James thinks maybe it's actually Tony flying the plane- there's a wild edge to the flight that gives him away.

Back in New York (and he hasn't been back here since that trip, years ago, with Natasha,) he carries the cooler into the SHIELD office. He doesn't listen to the scientists and doctors as they argue about what to do, and how to do it. He sits beside Steve, makes them work around him. Once they open the cooler and bring Steve out to start defrosting him, James rests his flesh hand over Steve's, where they're curled up around the metal sticking out of his shoulder. He doesn't know how much time passes before he's actually holding Steve's hands, and they're so cold, but when he's actually touching Steve, he feels something begin to come loose inside him, like maybe part of him was still frozen, and whatever they're doing to thaw Steve is thawing him too.

They wait to take the metal beam out until he's completely defrosted, his skin once again warm, the blue chased from his lips. James moves to let them work, but he doesn't go far. They make him put on a surgical mask and scrubs, and he sits at Steve's feet during the operation. When it's done, and they've wrapped his wounds in neat bandages (already beginning to be stained red, but that's a good sign- his blood is flowing, his heart is beating. He will heal,) James moves to hold his hands again.

They move them to a room like the one James had first woken up in, made up to look like something from 1945. James thinks it's silly, Steve will know something is wrong the way he hadn't, but he doesn't say anything. He doesn't trust his voice.

Steve heals quickly. In two days, they remove the bandage from his head, and it's like there was never a wound there. A third day sees his shoulder completely healed. He doesn't wake up. But James knows he will. So he sits, and he waits. He doesn't let go of Steve's hand. Someone, maybe Natasha, brings him food. He eats, but doesn't notice what it is. They give Steve an IV, putting nutrients back into his body so it can keep running. He hears the doctors worry that his mind might be gone, but he isn't brain-dead, so James knows he can wake up. He's just taking his time about it, making James wait for it.

At last, at last, the scans show he's about to wake up. They take away all the fancy equipment, take out the IV, and leave Steve and James alone. For an hour, nothing happens. James counts the seconds, then he counts Steve's breaths, watching his chest rise and fall. Then he feels a pressure on his hand, Steve squeezing it tight. James' breath catches in his throat. His eyes move to Steve's face, eyes still closed. His mouth twitches, his eyes close tighter, and James knows this. This is how Steve wakes up, slowly and then all at once.

Steve's eyes open and snap to James' face. "Hey," he whispers, in a rusty, dry voice that nevertheless is the most wonderful sound James has ever heard.

"Hey punk," James whispers back, squeezing his hand.

"Jerk," Steve says, stronger, and smiles that smile, Bucky's smile.

The ice in his heart melts away completely in that instant. He lets out a great, gasping sob and buries his face against Steve's chest. Steve holds him as he cries it out, shaking and sobbing. He murmurs words against his hair, hands running up and down his back. They pause at the metal of his shoulder, and again when they run through his hair- now longer than Steve has ever seen it. He can feel Steve start to shake under him, the hands clutch tighter. He hears Steve sob too, thinks he can make out the words "you're alive" in those sobs, over and over again. He's saying it too, those two words that mean more than anything else to them both right now.

They stay that way for a long while, until they've both calmed down. Until he finally believes what he's seen, knows the warmth under his fingers is real. He raises his head then. And he's not James any more. He's Bucky. And he has Steve with him again, now and forever after.


End file.
